silent treatment

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silent treatment

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silent treatment (usually uncountable, plural silent treatments)

1. A form of social sanction that consists of ignoring a particular individual, neither speaking to that person nor responding to his or her words.

   to give someone the silent treatment

   • 1917, Jack London, “That Dead Men Rise Up Never”, in The Human Drift, New York: Macmillan, page 40:

     Finally we gave him the silent treatment, and for weeks before he died we neither spoke to him nor did he speak to us.

   • 2023 December 12, Anita Chaudhuri, “The silent treatment: ‘One woman was ostracised by her husband for 40 years’”, in The Guardian‎, →ISSN:

     We met one woman who had been given the silent treatment by her husband for 40 years. If the silent treatment becomes a longstanding pattern, you lose self-esteem and perspective.

   • 2024 March 21, Arthur C. Brooks, “Whatever You Do, Don’t Do the Silent Treatment”, in The Atlantic‎:

     So sailors used a tried technique to deal with an offender: the silent treatment. They would ignore him completely for weeks on end. That might sound like an innocuous action to you, but in truth, it was far from it. The silent treatment was, according to the writer Otis Ferguson in 1944, “a process so effective in the monotony of ship’s life as to make strong men weep.”

• Usually preceded by the.